– complete with an internal view of the dome's constellational ceiling –

– Boullée also designed another, if substantially less well-known, cenotaph (complete, again, with monumentally over-sized dome and somewhat ridiculous, almost elephantiasis-stricken, pyramidal shell), revealed here in both elevation and section –

And even that wasn't the end. Boullée designed a tomb for Hercules; a tomb for Sparta; several funerary monuments; and a chapel of the dead that seems to have set the architectural temperature for the bunker-like, uninspired, and potentially even anti-Christian churches you now find all over today's middle America:

Well, actually, it looks an awful lot like the house Robert Venturi built for his mother –

Boullee's Architecture, Essay on Art, is really fantastic. He has a small section on cenotaphs and funerary monuments that discusses his approach and concepts for this type of architecture. Its worth reading.

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BLDGBLOG ("building blog") is written by Geoff Manaugh. The opinions expressed here are my own; they do not reflect the views of my friends, editors, employers, publishers, or colleagues, with whom this blog is not affiliated.